4.6. Creating a Bond Connection Using a GUI

You can use the GNOME control-center utility to direct NetworkManager to create a Bond from two or more Wired or InfiniBand connections. It is not necessary to create the connections to be bonded first. They can be configured as part of the process to configure the bond. You must have the MAC addresses of the interfaces available in order to complete the configuration process.

On the Bond tab, click Add and select the type of interface you want to use with the bond connection. Click the Create button. Note that the dialog to select the slave type only comes up when you create the first slave; after that, it will automatically use that same type for all further slaves.

The Editing bond0 slave 1 window appears. Use the Device MAC address drop-down menu to select the MAC address of the interface to be bonded. The first slave's MAC address will be used as the MAC address for the bond interface. If required, enter a clone MAC address to be used as the bond's MAC address. Click the Save button.

The mode that is used to share traffic over the slave connections which make up the bond. The default is Round-robin. Other load sharing modes, such as 802.3ad, can be selected by means of the drop-down list.

Link Monitoring

The method of monitoring the slaves ability to carry network traffic.

The following modes of load sharing are selectable from the Mode drop-down list:

Round-robin

Sets a round-robin policy for fault tolerance and load balancing. Transmissions are received and sent out sequentially on each bonded slave interface beginning with the first one available. This mode might not work behind a bridge with virtual machines without additional switch configuration.

Active backup

Sets an active-backup policy for fault tolerance. Transmissions are received and sent out through the first available bonded slave interface. Another bonded slave interface is only used if the active bonded slave interface fails. Note that this is the only mode available for bonds of InfiniBand devices.

XOR

Sets an XOR (exclusive-or) policy. Transmissions are based on the selected hash policy. The default is to derive a hash by XOR of the source and destination MAC addresses multiplied by the modulo of the number of slave interfaces. In this mode traffic destined for specific peers will always be sent over the same interface. As the destination is determined by the MAC addresses this method works best for traffic to peers on the same link or local network. If traffic has to pass through a single router then this mode of traffic balancing will be suboptimal.

Broadcast

Sets a broadcast policy for fault tolerance. All transmissions are sent on all slave interfaces. This mode might not work behind a bridge with virtual machines without additional switch configuration.

802.3ad

Sets an IEEE 802.3ad dynamic link aggregation policy. Creates aggregation groups that share the same speed and duplex settings. Transmits and receives on all slaves in the active aggregator. Requires a network switch that is 802.3ad compliant.

Adaptive transmit load balancing

Sets an adaptive Transmit Load Balancing (TLB) policy for fault tolerance and load balancing. The outgoing traffic is distributed according to the current load on each slave interface. Incoming traffic is received by the current slave. If the receiving slave fails, another slave takes over the MAC address of the failed slave. This mode is only suitable for local addresses known to the kernel bonding module and therefore cannot be used behind a bridge with virtual machines.

Adaptive load balancing

Sets an Adaptive Load Balancing (ALB) policy for fault tolerance and load balancing. Includes transmit and receive load balancing for IPv4 traffic. Receive load balancing is achieved through ARP negotiation. This mode is only suitable for local addresses known to the kernel bonding module and therefore cannot be used behind a bridge with virtual machines.

The following types of link monitoring can be selected from the Link Monitoring drop-down list. It is a good idea to test which channel bonding module parameters work best for your bonded interfaces.

MII (Media Independent Interface)

The state of the carrier wave of the interface is monitored. This can be done by querying the driver, by querying MII registers directly, or by using ethtool to query the device. Three options are available:

Monitoring Frequency

The time interval, in milliseconds, between querying the driver or MII registers.

Link up delay

The time in milliseconds to wait before attempting to use a link that has been reported as up. This delay can be used if some gratuitous ARP requests are lost in the period immediately following the link being reported as “up”. This can happen during switch initialization for example.

Link down delay

The time in milliseconds to wait before changing to another link when a previously active link has been reported as “down”. This delay can be used if an attached switch takes a relatively long time to change to backup mode.

ARP

The address resolution protocol (ARP) is used to probe one or more peers to determine how well the link-layer connections are working. It is dependent on the device driver providing the transmit start time and the last receive time.

Where did the comment section go?

Red Hat's documentation publication system recently went through an upgrade to enable speedier, more mobile-friendly content. We decided to re-evaluate our commenting platform to ensure that it meets your expectations and serves as an optimal feedback mechanism. During this redesign, we invite your input on providing feedback on Red Hat documentation via the discussion platform.